Why My Students Will Be Reviewing Basic Multiplication Tomorrow

Tonight as we were leaving I remembered to pick up the mail.  While my husband was driving I scanned through it all junk, junk, more junk.  Then, I saw the a flyer for a furniture/electronics rental store.  This, of course, was junk, but I was intrigued.  We are currently working on an exponential growth unit and this might lead to some interesting discussions.

Here is a beautiful example of what I found in the flyer, an LG 60" Plasma TV:

It was on sale for $129.99 a month for 24 easy payments!  What a steal!  Gasp, laugh, gasp, laugh, okay I'm on the floor dying laughing now.

Tomorrow I will have my students do basic multiplication.  How much does this TV really cost?  Drum roll please........... $3119.76!  Now I'm not into TV's, however I happen to know some about their pricing because I'm good friends with someone that loves them.  I know the type of TV's that are over $3000, and this my dear friends, would be to those TV's, like a record player to an iPod.

I will have the students use their tablets/phones to search for similar items just in case they are not as knowledgeable about them.  They will find that a reconditioned one of these is $575 or a new model is a little over $800.  They will be surprised (that is my favorite part).

Basic math.  If only people would use it.

I will then have them do a bit of basic division to figure out how many months the owner could have "paid themselves" to save for one of those TV's versus the "I must have it now" mentality.  I might even put up a video like this to drive home how ridiculous the "I must have it now" thing is, although I don't think I could listen to it three periods in a row.

"But godliness with contentment is great gain" is what I'll want to say.  This is public school though, so it will be disguised a bit.

In case the state standard police are out I might have the students figure out the APR for this TV loan, since that is actually our state standard (basic multiplication is somewhere back in elementary, so long ago that people forget to use on real life stuff like this).  Somehow I think doing basic multiplication though will hit home more than APR.

Gosh I love my job:).